Wholly Smoke is a 1938 Looney Tunes cartoon starring Porky Pig and directed by Frank Tashlin. The run time is 7 minutes 14 seconds (6 minutes 56 seconds for the edited, redrawn version). This cartoon teaches the dangers about smoking.

Contents

Plot

A man at church is ringing the bell to signal the beginning of the service. At the house of Porky Pig, his mother is calling to him to come downstairs. A younger Porky comes flying down the handrail of the stairs just stopping before crashing into a vase. His mother proceeds to give him a nickel for the collection plate at church including a disclaimer about not spending the money on candy. Porky reassures his mother and leaves. Along the way he runs into a bully standing alongside a wooden fence. The bully is practicing smoking tricks with a cigar when Porky arrives and chides him for smoking while underage. The bully then gets in Porky's face sarcastically accusing him of being a tough guy. After a few moments of arguing Porky offers a bet to prove he is not a wimp. The deal being the cigar for the nickel. Enticed by the proposition, the bully quickly gives up his cigar. Porky in turn tries to repeat the same set of tricks -- with disastrous results.

Porky soon goes into a haze and stumbles into a smoke shop. An anthropomorphic cloud shrinks Porky in size and then introduces himself as someone all smokers were well acquainted with "Nick O'Teen". Nick then offers Porky all the smoking he can handle. Suddenly a wide variety of tobacco products and smoking devices comes to life to force feed Porky everything from chewing tobacco to cigarettes, all set to the song "Little Boys Shouldn't Smoke." At the culmination of the nightmare Porky awakens and rushes to church. As he is sitting reading his hymnal the collection plate starts coming towards him when he starts to panic. He races out of the church and grabs the nickel from the bully. He thrusts the cigar into the bully's mouth as it promptly explodes. He hurries back to church just in time to give his offering and the cartoon ends with him promising never to smoke again.

Availability

Censorship

The version of this cartoon that aired on Nickelodeon, the syndicated "Merrie Melodies Show", and Cartoon Network was a colorized (redrawn on Cartoon Network; computer-colorized on Nickelodeon and "The Merrie Melodies Show") version that had the following edits from the original black and white version:[1]

The beginning of the "Little Boys Shouldn't Smoke Song" where four matchsticks strike themselves and burn out to form blackface (while singing in the style of The Mills Brothers) was cut on Nickelodeon and "The Merrie Melodies Show". On Cartoon Network, the scene was recolored so the blackface would be red.

The part where a pipe cleaner sticks his head in a dirty pipe and comes out looking and singing like Cab Calloway was cut on "The Merrie Melodies Show" and Cartoon Network. It was left uncut in the early 1990s on Nickelodeon, but by the mid-to-late 1990s, the scene was edited out, though in the flashback after the "NO SMOKING" cigarette march, one can see the part that was cut on Nickelodeon (the newer, redrawn version on Cartoon Network replaces the Cab Calloway part during the montage with the Indian cigars scene that was cut when Cartoon Network aired the redrawn version of this cartoon).

The short shot of Porky tied to a post while a tribe of Indian pipes dance around him was cut on Cartoon Network (but left in on "The Merrie Melodies Show" and Nickelodeon).

Notes

The cartoon shares a similar plot to the 1938 cartoon "Pipe Dreams", as both involve normally good characters tempted to do something dangerous.